Uniworld Increases Company-Owned Fleet To Ten With Launch Of The Majestic River Beatrice

Small cruise line plans six visits

Elvira Schmatzler and her companion, Virginia Cameron, have been here several times over the years but they had never witnessed the Portuguese Festival and Blessing of the Fleet.

Duncan Bailey and his wife, Barbara, had never been to Provincetown and were having fun ducking into the stores on Commercial Street. All of them, plus another 50 or so fellow passengers, arrived here recently on the Grande Caribe, a 96-passenger small cruise ship owned by the American Canadian Caribbean Line (ACCL). The niche cruise company has included Provincetown on its Cape Cod & Islands itinerary for the first time this summer, hoping to gauge customer interest in continuing the tour in the future.

“Most of our passengers are repeats. We wanted to offer something different, give them more variety,” said Erika Moore, ACCL operations manager. “Provincetown is so different from the other stops, a little more vibrant and eclectic. The art galleries are a draw for our people.”

ACCL has scheduled six tours into Provincetown this summer, part of a five-night cruise that includes Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Newport, R.I. The new summer tour was the result of marketing by the Provincetown Tourism Office, Chamber of Commerce and harbormaster’s office to attract more cruise ships to the harbor. The ships, which rarely stay more than 24 hours, often drop hundreds of passengers into town, and most spend money on food and shopping. A large cruise ship operated by Rosie O’Donnell’s company, R Family Vacations, is scheduled to anchor here next week.

ACCL, however, specializes in small cruise ships that can tie up directly to MacMillan Pier. That makes it easier for the passengers, Moore said, who can walk to most sites in town without having to spend time waiting for a tender to ferry them to the dock. That seemed to work for the Baileys, who ignored most of the town’s history in favor of shopping.

“There are some unique stores here that you don’t see in Inman, S.C.,” Bailey said, referring to his hometown. “We helped pump a little money into the local economy.”

Schmatzler and Cameron, who live in Plymouth and have traveled to Provincetown frequently in the past, were more interested in the Blessing of the Fleet, which took place a few yards from their ship, an unexpected bonus on their trip.

“We felt like it was a foreign country,” Schmatzler said. “[The Blessing] was so different. We didn’t expect anything like that in Provincetown.”

“It was really fascinating. The boats kept coming and coming,” Cameron said.

The ACCL cruises to Provincetown and the Islands had low passenger numbers for the four trips in June but are almost fully booked for the two August cruises. Moore said that even if the company deems the new cruise a success, they have scheduled only one trip to Provincetown next summer. The reason is that the company has to finalize its sailing schedule over a year in advance and did not have any information on the popularity of the new Cape and Islands cruise before it had to commit to the 2009 season.

European Barging Introduces Premicon Queen

Tour operator European Barging and River Cruises has announced that its new 100-passenger, all-suite Premicon Queen is offering two- to six-night cruises on the Rhine and Danube Rivers. For all 2008 departures, European Barging is offering a 25 percent discount off published fares.

The Premicon’s suites are 193-322 square feet, with Queen suites featuring 32-square-foot balconies. Queen Suite guests have personal butler service available at all times; snacks and drinks can be delivered to all guests at any time. The in-room minibar is stocked daily and the Premicon’s concierge can provide services that include theater tickets in Vienna or limousine service to the nearest golf course. The ship has an elevator, Wi-Fi accessibility and laptops are available for guests. German and English are the onboard languages.

Rhine cruises sail between Cologne and Basel through the Middle Rhine Valley — a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Throughout the course of the cruise are 40 castles that stretch over 40 miles; Sayn Castle — one of the last fairy-tale fortresses — is a shore excursion destination. Another stop is the wine capital of Rudesheim, where special culinary selections will be served by chef Johann Lafer’s team at the nearby Stromburg castle. In addition, guests will learn trade secrets from gourmet chefs of the Table d’Or and enjoy Black Forest cake and coffee aboard a classic train as well as a wine and chocolate tasting at the Graflich Wolff Metternich’schen winery.

After circling the legendary Lorelei, the Premicon Queen will move on to the Main river and Frankfurt. Further downstream, the Main flows through the Franconian wine country and destinations that include Bamberg, where the entire Old City is made up of narrow canals; it’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Another stop includes Nuremberg, birthplace of Albrecht Durer and the idyllic Altmuhltal (Valley of Old Mills) before the cruise disembarks in Regensburg.

The Danube cruise starts in Regensburg with an opportunity to visit the Spanish Riding School where haute ecole (equestrianship) has been taught for 430 years. The finale is a ride on a vintage steam train to the Godollo Palace and a festive dinner in Budapest’s famous Gundel restaurant.

Premicon Queen also offers roundtrip Frankfurt Christmas Market itineraries, a Christmas Cruise and New Year’s cruises.

More information

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Tauck Reveals Riverboat Name, Announces 2009 Dates

Tauck World Discovery has revealed that its newest riverboat, currently under construction and scheduled to debut in April 2009, will be called the MS Swiss Jewel. The Swiss Jewel will be Tauck's third all-new riverboat launched in a three-year span, joining its sister-ships the MS Swiss Sapphire (launched April, 2008) and the MS Swiss Emerald (launched April, 2006).

"We're very excited to be boosting our European river cruising capacity once again," said Dan Mahar, Tauck's CEO.

River cruising has been the fastest growing segment of Tauck's business for the past several years - it's 2008 departures were more than 70% sold-out by late last fall. The construction of the Swiss Jewel will help satisfy the high demand for Tauck's river cruises. The company is also increasing its river cruise departures by 25% for 2009.

The new Swiss Jewel will alternate with Tauck's other vessels on five of the company's seven river cruise itineraries next year.

For more information and savings on all Tauck River Cruises

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European river cruises are popular as U.S. dollar declines

The all-inclusive European river cruise along the Rhine or the Danube is fast becoming the top travel hit of 2008.

My own cruise of the Rhine this spring, starting in Amsterdam (at the Rhine Canal) and going to the German cities Cologne, Cochem, Rudesheim, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and ending in Basel, Switzerland, was sold out, with American travelers convinced they have overcome the poor present value of the U.S. dollar.

All the river cruise lines -- Amadeus Waterways, Peter Deilmann, Uniworld and others -- are reporting equally high sales.

Although we passengers all had to change some dollars into euros for tips to the riverboat staff, we otherwise spent very little beyond the basic cost of the cruise and airfare.

Our lodgings were in comfortable cabins aboard the ship, and two of our daily meals were a giant buffet breakfast and an equally massive sit-down dinner of near-gourmet level prepared by a surprisingly accomplished ship chef and his staff. Some of us did not even have the appetite to buy a light lunch on shore.

I will not pretend that seeing Europe in this fashion is a fully satisfying alternative to the kind of trips we used to enjoy when the dollar was king. But the European river cruise has some plus points.

You stop every day, usually for the entire day, in a historic European city in which the riverboat ties up very near to the center of town, and not -- as in some ocean cruises -- far out to sea or miles from the city. Although the riverboat tries hard to sell you optional land excursions by motorcoach, and many passengers buy them, I had no difficulty simply wandering into the center of town just a short walk away. And there I passed the day in more or less the same way as in earlier years.

Unlike an ocean cruise aboard one of those new, 3,000-passenger sea monsters, the river cruise ships do not inundate the cities at which they stop. The typical river ship carries 140 passengers -- rarely more than that -- and its presence in town is scarcely noticed by inhabitants.

Except for perhaps the starting or ending port, the cities themselves are never the major capitals, but, in the case of my own Rhine cruise, historic and well-preserved examples of traditional, midsize European life. Few of us used to visit Cologne, Heidelberg or Rudesheim in past years.

There are no casinos on board the European river ships -- and passengers aren't the kind who crave casino life. There are no lip-synched, Las Vegas-style evening shows on the river ships. On my ship, entertainment was by a pianist and singer, and most passengers never heard them, remaining on shore to sample the local nightlife.

There are no bingo games, art auctions, wet T-shirt contests, rock-climbing walls, bowling alleys. There are no children's games (and no children). There are a bar, two computer monitors for e-mail, a tiny shop, an equally tiny fitness room with one treadmill, a beauty parlor. That's it. The ship does not cater to people who rely on outside distractions for their entertainment. Most passengers look forward to the port visits and attend late-evening talks on the next day's stop in the ship's lounge (of which there is one).

On board the river ships, the staff is international -- French, German or Dutch officers, usually younger people from Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria in the middle positions -- as on my ship. And although the passenger complement on my cruise wasmassively middle-age, a quarter of them were young people interested in the life and history of Europe.

I share your own sorrow over the drastic drop in the value of the dollar and the group-oriented travels to which we've all been condemned by that decline. And I prefer to overcome the problem by dramatically lowering the category of the accommodations I use for a European visit -- and thus offsetting the poor value of the dollar.

But if you're determined to enjoy all the creature comforts on your travels in Europe, you couldn't do better than on a European river cruise.

Discounted River Cruises

The top 10 rivers to cruise

Cruisers looking to truly know the soul of a city or region oftentimes needn't look further than its lifeline — the flowing waters of its river, from which nourishment, trade, transport, recreation, and more nods to cultured civilization have all sprung forth. River cruising, long popular with Europeans, is today experiencing a surge of interest on storied waterways around the globe, thanks to the intimate and enriching destination approach it provides on routes simply impossible to replicate by any other means. Leave the over-the-top Las Vegas megaships out at sea, and parking and traffic headaches back on land, and instead opt to cruise the meandering waterways of a region’s heartland aboard small ships ranging from luxury riverboats to vintage paddle-wheelers, with every river bend revealing a destination’s new face courtesy of a constantly shuffled deck of quaint riverside towns, historic monuments, and pristine countryside.

1. Amazon

Sections of the wild waters of the Peruvian Amazon (like the portion that courses through the five-million-acre Pacaya Samiria Reserve) are so remote that they can only be reached by plane or by ship, but the pristine region's ecological riches (think mammoth Victoria Regia water lilies, pink dolphins, sloths, and capuchin monkeys) have long lured veteran travelers.

2. Danube

Set sail on the well traveled “Blue Danube” whose beauty inspired one of Johann Strauss’ Viennese waltzes. Used for centuries as a route between eastern and central Europe, the river stretches from the Black Forest to the Black Sea.

3. Hudson and St. Lawrence Seaway

American Canadian Caribbean Line’s 12-day “Northeastern Fall Foliage” itinerary combines sailings along New York and Canada’s most scenic waterways.

4. Mekong

The 12th largest river in the world, the Mekong is the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, snaking through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea.

5. Mississippi

Steamboats have been a symbol of the American South since they were invented in the 18th century. Modernity may have replaced them with larger, more efficient vessels, but Majestic America keeps the tradition alive with its ships like the Delta Queen, a gracious ode to an earlier era with its stained-glass windows, teak decks, and 176 state rooms.

6. Murray

The “Mighty Murray” is to Australia what the Mississippi is to the United States. Stretching from its mountain source in Victoria to near Adelaide in South Australia, it, combined with the Darling River that feeds it, comprise Australia’s longest river (and the seventh longest in the world).

7. Nile

The awesome sights of ancient Egypt are on every intrepid traveler’s to-see list and you can cover all the highlights, from the pyramids and the Sphinx to King Tut’s tomb and the Luxor Temples.

8. Seine

Billed as the world’s first “boutique luxury” river cruise ship, Jewel River Cruises’ MS Jewel Imperial Blue drifts along the Seine between Paris and Normandy’s medieval capital of Rouen. The ship accommodates just 70 guests (with an exceptional 2:1 guest-to-crew ratio), but reserving a spot won’t be difficult as more than a dozen voyages are planned from August through December. Eight to 14-day itineraries offer options for culinary adventures with a Michelin three-star chef in Paris, a tour of Monet’s house and gardens in Vernon, private wine tastings, and helicopter rides over the Champagne region. The land tours alone make it worth the splurge (from $5,999 per person), but with onboard amenities like a full service spa, a well curated wine bar, and spacious, modern suites ranging from 215 to 469 square feet, you may think twice before disembarking.

9. Volga and Russian Waterways

Experience Russia’s imperial majesty while sailing along one of the oldest Russian routes, visiting cities of the Golden Ring, from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Premium Amadeus Waterways offers memorable 14-day Russian waterway sailings aboard the well-appointed Tolstoy (originally built to host big-shot Kremlin officials). The itinerary starts with one of the country’s grandes dames, Moscow, famous for its domed churches and burgeoning hip nightlife scene, then covers visits to various Golden Ring cities like Uglich, Yaroslavl, and Kostroma, before arriving in Russia’s other crowned-jewel, St. Petersburg, a magnificent city speckled with imperial palaces and a few hundred bridges. The journey incorporates cultural extras like an exclusive ballet performance at the Hermitage Theater, onboard Russian classes, and even a home visit and meal with a local Russian family in Uglich. Sailings are available from May through September.

10. Yangtze

With the Olympic torch shining a spotlight on China in ’08, you needn’t be a pole vaulter to discover the nation’s treasures. Instead, sign up for one of Viking River Cruises’ 11-night "Imperial Jewels of China" excursions, combining land tours of the Beijing capital, the Terra Cotta Warriors’ site at Xian, and cosmopolitan Shanghai, with a cruise along the Yangtze River, a river lifeline that has long served to interweave the lives and legends of the local people. The intimate and upscale Viking Century Sky offers spacious staterooms each with windows or private balconies, well suited for enjoying the views of the breathtaking Three Gorges region. The cruise line’s package rates include all meals, shore excursions, six nights in high-end hotels, and intra-China flights; sailings are available between May and November. Trip extensions are also available to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

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Avalon Waterways Christens Avalon Scenery

Avalon Waterways unveiled its third new ship in Europe in two years. The Avalon Scenery, the newest ship on French waters, accommodates 138 passengers. The Scenery boasts floor-to-ceiling windows on two decks, a "fun pool" on the sky deck, elevator and Club Lounge. The ship also showcases Avalon's signature 172-square-foot staterooms with standard amenities that include hotel-style beds with duvets, Egyptian cotton linens, flat-screen satellite televisions, mini-bars, safes, modern bathrooms and large wardrobes.

In 2008, the Avalon Scenery will sail exclusively on the new "Flavors of Burgundy & Provence" journey with 32 departure dates between April and November.

The new 11-day "Flavors of Burgundy & Provence" trip begins with a stay in Paris. From Paris, guests will drive south into Beaune, the unofficial capital of the Côte d'Or area, and continuing to Chalon-sur-Saône to board Avalon Scenery. After a port stop in Tournus, travelers will sail to Mâcon for a guided walking tour. From there, they will cruise down the Rhône to Lyon, France's second largest city and its gastronomic capital. Then, it's off to the twin cities of Tournon and Tain L'Hermitage, located among vineyards between the River Rhône and the granite slopes of the Hermitage. Avignon -- also called the "City of Popes" -- is the next stop. Then, the boat heads to Arles for more exploration, including venturing into the Roman Amphitheater. This journey ends with a stay in Nice and optional excursion to Monte Carlo in Monaco. The trip is priced from $2,059 cruise- and land-only.

Call 800-640-4899 for discounted rates

Elegant Cruises Waives Single Supplements

MS Bremen to Debut This Summer

Hapag-Lloyd Cruises' four-star expedition ship, the MS Bremen, will make its Newfoundland premiere voyage with nine ports June 3-14. Discounted by almost 30 percent, the Canadian itinerary starts at $3,800 per person, double occupancy, for an outside cabin. Airfare is not included and the cruise will begin and end in Halifax/Nova Scotia with highlights including the Cabot Strait, Bakers Brook Falls Path, Gros Morne National Park, Cape St. Mary and more.

American safari cruises offers new family accommodations

With the increasing popularity of multi-generational family cruising, American Safari Cruises has incorporated triple accommodations in the redesign of its luxury yacht, the Safari Explorer. Set to debut in May with voyages in Alaska, the multimillion dollar renovation of the 36-guest ship will provide more comfortable and convenient accommodations for large family groups.

Of the 145-foot Safari Explorer’s 18 staterooms, four will have a convertible couch-bed, two will be top-deck Commodore suites with a separate bedroom, and two will be oversized Admiral staterooms on the main deck. American Safari recommends these redesigned rooms to couples traveling with a teenager or elderly parent.

With American Safari Cruises, triple accommodations for the four staterooms are priced at 15% less than a regular per person, double-occupancy fare. Per person triple fares for the Commodore suites begin at $6,595 for Alaska and $6,295 for Hawaii. Per person triple fares for the Admiral staterooms begin at $5,495 for Alaska and $5,195 for Hawaii.

The Safari Explorer includes an on-deck hot tub, fitness area, complimentary massages, sauna and yoga classes, a wine library for special tastings, two certified naturalists, a two-to-one guest ratio and more. All private transfers and from-yacht activities, such as kayaking and boat exploration, are included.

The Safari Explorer will begin inter-island Hawaiian cruising in December.